While celebrity activism is a notably fickle endeavor, it’s clear that new Web-based tools are leading to radically new types of initiatives to bring about political change. Look no further than the hyper-viral Kony 2012 campaign, which raised awareness around the world about Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony. What made the campaign so powerful was the ability to message 20 major "culturemakers" (i.e. celebrities) to get the word out about Kony, via social media. With a simple tweet, these celebrities were able to recruit thousands of people to the cause and attract the attention of U.S. legislators. After all, it’s one thing when the United Nations comments on Kony, but it’s quite another when Oprah or Kim Kardashian messages a veritable army of followers with the plea: “Stop Kony!!!”

There is a downside to all of this activism, of course. Writing in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker, John Colapinto explains in-depth how and why celebrities get into the philanthropy game. Many celebrities, to nobody’s surprise, have a shallow understanding, at best, of what they are supporting or why. Often, these efforts are merely the fad du jour or an attempt to rehabilitate a reputation over the short-term. In hindsight, the whole Kony 2012 campaign was deeply flawed from the beginning — even before the series of bizarre and unfortunate incidents that enveloped the organizers of the campaign.

However, there is something wonderfully romantic in the notion that the leading men and women of Hollywood are real-life heroes in addition to playing them on the big screen. Now that social media — especially Twitter — has empowered celebrities to get their messages out to a truly global audience, will they be looking for new ways to use technology to further their philanthropic causes? Clooney’s satellite network, which he refers to as the "anti-genocide paparazzi", could be just the beginning of a new era of high-tech celebrity activism. Now that non-profit organizations are acclimating to the idea of using drones to monitor abuses around the world, it’s possible to envision a future in which celebrities operate their own private drones and satellite networks to achieve their philanthropic goals.

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Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.